bank of america, right, john? they would never permit this kind of in coherence in what the policy is. what they are going to take in. >> a question about this topic. based on your reporting, how far do you think the president is willing to go on entitlements? >> when i talked to the president in the summer on this, he acknowledged, quite openly, if it was bad politics for he and democrats to say we are going to cut medicare beneficiaries. he then went on, i think, in the end, you cannot be president and cannot be a realist. he said it is untenable to not help them because they are driving the budget deficit. the whole entitlement issue has been real -- of this problem. the taxing issue, yes. the pyrotechnics. there is the struggle between the republican and democratic view. but all of the numbers people know that it is the entitlement issue. if you can come up with some sort of fixed trajectory to make it somehow stable, that would be -- you have something from the book. >> your books are all ultimately about pow